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Crete White Mountains and Coastal Trail, September 12–19, 2024
— Amy G. Hackney Blackwell, with Christopher Blackwell
In mid-October, we went to Crete.
We spent our first ten days or so in western Crete, hiking in the mountains and along the southern coastline.
We combined two of Trekking Hellas’s itineraries to maximize our coverage of southwest Crete. First, we did the Hiking in the White Mountains (Self-Guided) trek. Then we added on the last two days of Coastal treks in Crete (E4). That gave us a really good sense of the geography of the area.
Short version: Crete is rocky and rough! Crete is also kind of scary.
If any geological feature distinguishes Crete, it is the gorge. The entire island appears to be in the process of breaking apart into a dozen separate pieces, with gorges forming the breaks between them. Gorges have very steep sides.
I do not do well with exposure—not “exposure” in the sense of “being cold and wet”, but in the sense of standing near sheer drops on one side of a trail. I especially hate exposure combined with narrow, dusty trails that are angled downhill. Crete is the only place in Greece where exposure was an issue for us. It’s a steep place!
Also: southern Crete is hard to navigate. When we booked our trip, we had no idea that certain portions of the transport would have to be by boat. Sections of the south coast have no roads. Certain towns are served entirely by ferry boats that sail east and west. The mountain roads themselves are no picnic to drive. This definitely adds to the cost of travel there.
That being said, we love Crete. It’s beautiful, the food is great, and the people are both friendly and chill.
October 12: SeaJets Santorini–Rethymno and on to Chania
The ferry route is a straight shot south-southwest from Santorini to Crete.
We left Santorini on a Saturday afternoon and cruised into the port of Rethymno well after dark, though only an hour or so behind schedule. Our Welcome Pickups driver, Kyriakis (it means “Sunday”) was waiting for us to drive us an hour west to Chania.
One thing about the Greek economy–it’s brutal to young people. Kyriakis is an engineer with a job at a renewable energy company, but he finds it (considerably) more lucrative to drive tourists around Crete. Even with Crete’s arcane taxi rules (all his fares must either start or end in Chania), joining forces with his dad’s taxi company and spending a fair amount of downtime either driving to a pickup (he had to drive from Chania to Rethymno to collect us) or waiting for late pickups to materialize (our ferry was delayed) is much more likely to result in consistently reliable income than a professional job.
Kyriakis speaks English with a near-BBC accent, the result of a childhood spent listening to audiobooks of Tolkein and J.K. Rowling. He’s lived in Chania his whole life and speaks of it with deep affection. He gave us a list of things to be sure to experience in Chania and Crete:
We should eat at Syntrophia, home of the best souvlaki in Chania.
We should eat seafood at Manos, on the waterfront in the Nea Chora beachfront neighborhood of Chania.
We should get galataboureko at Perathorakis bakery, just around the corner from Manos.
We should try a sfakia ni pita, a great delicacy from the town of Chora Sfakion on the south coast.
We were to follow all of these recommendations, each of which proved sound.
The first one we followed was the suggestion to find Syntrophia that very night, right after we checked into the hotel around 9:00 p.m.. Syntrophia is a hole-in-the-wall souvlaki joint run by a man and what appears to be his mother. There’s nothing fancy there; the sign isn’t even in English. We sat at a table on the narrow sidewalk next to a bank of motor scooters that doordash drivers used for their deliveries. But the souvlaki definitely hit the spot. Even the hot dogs that are evidently part of a combo platter….
This was the SMALL souvlaki plate!
Good luck spotting this place even if you can find the right street!
October 13: Chania
We’d wanted a day to explore Chania before setting off on our hikes. In retrospect, maybe we didn’t need it; Chania is so touristed up these days, there’s very little interesting about it. The one thing Chris actually wanted to see–the Maritime Museum–was closed on Sunday. Maybe we were just peevish from two days in Santorini.
No matter! The waterfront is always pretty, and the weather was balmy. A relaxing Sunday wasn’t a terrible prospect.
Old Town waterfront
We made our way over to Nea Chora, “new place”, a little harbor just to the west of the main Old Town one. Nea Chora a popular place for local families to eat seafood on weekend afternoons.
Nea Chora, Chania
A boat named “Psychotherapy”
We located Manos, easy to find because of its massive tables full of family groups ordering their Sunday lunches. We did likewise.
Chris was happy to have lunch!
One page of the extensive menu at Manos
Kyriakis had been very clear about what we needed to order. We should get boiled octopus, marinated anchovies, mixed vegetables, and definitely barbouni (red mullet). But we also wanted a horiatiki, and Chris wanted to try fava, the yellow split pea purée. The portions are clearly intended for groups of at least six, more likely eight or ten. Seafood restaurants aimed at a local market don’t deal in tiny portions of anything.
We ended up compromising. We got the marinated anchovies, but not the boiled octopus. We had enough vegetables with our massive salad.
Anchovies plus a massive horiatiki! The cheese is mizithra instead of feta, a Cretan convention.
For the barbouni, I asked if we might, just possibly, have a half portion. This unusual request had to go all the way to Manos himself, but he graciously approved it.
A half-portion of barbouni along with split pea puree.
It’s days like this that I really miss my massive New Orleans extended family. We never lacked for participants at Sunday dinners. Dining this way as a couple feels woefully inadequate.
This meal with our friends in Gavalou is much more Greek style!
After this massive lunch, we hardly needed dessert, but I do love galataboureko, and Kyriakis had assured us that Perathorakis made the best galataboureko in the known universe. There was the small matter that he insisted that they sold this confection only by the tray, and we had no idea what we’d do with an entire tray of Greek custard pie, but we thought we’d figure it out when we got there.
After a few minutes of wandering around the area just south of the Nea Chora waterfront, not especially helped by Apple Maps (which claimed the bakery was in a place where it clearly was not) and by my guess at the spelling of the name (entirely phonetic), we found it–Perathorakis
As it turned out, they make tiny galataboureko bites in addition to full trays. This was ideal! We bought two, ate them on the spot, and agreed that they were indeed contenders for the title of best galataboureko ever.
The rest of the day we took easy. Our local contact from Trekking Hellas, Eleni, met us at the hotel that evening to go over details of our hike. (When a Cretan guide says that they don’t hike a certain section of trail because “it’s very exposed,” pay attention–and be prepared for at least some of the acceptable sections to be mildly hair-raising!)
The evening view from our hotel. Plus a car-alarm.
We went out for a bit to stroll around the Old Town. We bought traditional Cretan knives for the kids. We got ice cream.
In need of no more food that day, we retired to our hotel. There, we watched the OG Carrie, with Sissy Spacek and John Travolta. Groovy!